Monday, August 24, 2009

[The Lights Blink, Signaling the End of Intermission]

Haven't felt much like writing about bikes lately. Don't get me wrong, there has been plenty of bike in my life-commuting and intervals and Tuesday PIR and cyclocross training and mountain biking. My short track knee healed, then became my Mountain Bike Oregon knee. Riding home late now requires lights and my days of carefree commuting on my race bike are numbered. The winter bike is tuned up and ready for the first September rainfall. Cross is starting soon and I have a lot of work to do to get rid of my double-hopping, triple salchow remount.

What was lacking was any inspiration to write about riding. The acts of training had become so scheduled that they were performed almost mechanically. Which may sound bad, but it wasn't. Rather, it allowed me to get my fitness back for cyclocross without expending a lot of emotional energy.

What I have been writing about is relationships and love and sex and my own perceived loss of sanity. Not here, obviously. Once I realized that there are people out there that ACTUALLY READ THIS THING, I decided that a private blog would allow me to get my verbal knickers untwisted with minimal risk of catastrophic embarrassment.

There has been a lot of "relationship" cycling (pun totally intended) through my life in the last few weeks--both on the romantic and friendship front. Things that are promising. Things that are disappointing. Things that disappear from my life just as quickly as they appeared. Things that were old that become new again. Things that appeared new, but were in fact old but wrapped in shiny new clothing. Things that keep me up too late at night. Things that just make me want to sleep for days.

As is my custom when my life gets complicated, I tried to simplify and focus by selecting a song and listening to it 20, 50, 80 times in a row. This strategy frequently backfires, as I usually pick something sticky sweet and romantic (currently playing: James Yuill's "This Sweet Love"), which begets a trance-like manic and repetitive inner monologue:

I am lonely.

I lost five pounds!

I am a bad friend.

I got laid!

I think I am going crazy.

Frye boots!

I am going to die an old cat lady.

Nachos!

I need new cyclocross tires.

I love my life!

I hate my life.

Nachos!

And so on and so forth. I really did feel like I was going, as Burns eloquently puts it, "cuckoo for CoCo Puffs." Luckily, the timing of this most recent spell coincided with reading a book on chemistry of the female brain. As an aside, this book was given to me by an ex-boyfriend who claimed that it helped him understand me. I, therefore, refused to be understood and refused read the book until I found myself going away for a long weekend with nothing to read (Ayn Rand did not count as reading material. Getting through that book is basically a character building exercise.).

There was a chapter on what happens, chemically, to the brain of many childless 30-something women. In a word: Bonkers.

This made me feel a lot better. I may be insane, BUT ITS NOT MY FAULT. I can blame hormones. I no longer had to be accountable for crying uncontrollably during minivan ads. Or when Fred Meyers runs out of gummy bears. Or when wedding pictures for people I don't even KNOW are posted on Facebook. Because these events have all happened in the last six weeks.

So I wrote about all of it. Obsessively. Then erased everything. Compulsively.

Now that the estrogen wave has subsided, I'm back. Back to thinking and writing about "normal" things. Bikes, bikes and more bikes. So stay tuned for a scratch-and-sniff post on Mountain Bike Oregon and how I survived three days without taking a shower.

I did Alpine on Friday and Saturday and an easy ride out of camp on Sunday. In retrospect I wish I would have done ATC on Sunday. I was also there in July, but didn't have a chance to do Alpine. So I made up for it by riding it all weekend. I have to agree: Jedi was my favorite part of the trail as well. It was so amazing in there. I stopped and took some pictures, but they don't do it justice.

The river was insanely cold. I stood on the shore with a washcloth and wiped myself down. I wasn't brave enough to get all the way in...

Vital Statistics

If you were to ask me to describe myself in two words, I would say "bike dork." Mostly because "incurable smart ass" is three words.
On February 24, 2011, I celebrated my first year as a cancer survivor. With the structural integrity of my boob currently stabilized, it is back to writing about bikes and passing judgment on my fellow human beings.